A budget-writing panel in the House of Representatives passed a $24.8 billion NASA budget bill Tuesday, joining a similar subcommittee in the Senate in maintaining the space agency's funding after the White House proposed a nearly 25 percent cut.
The budget bills making their way through the House and Senate don't specify funding levels for individual programs, but the topline numbers—$24.8 billion in the House version and $24.9 billion the Senate bill—represent welcome news for scientists, industry, and space enthusiasts bracing for severe cuts requested by the Trump administration.
The spending plan passed Tuesday by the House Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies covers NASA and numerous other federal agencies. The $24.8 billion budget the House seeks for NASA is $6 billion more than the Trump administration's budget proposal, and keeps NASA's funding next year the same as this year.
The corresponding subcommittee in the Senate passed its version of NASA's fiscal year 2026 budget July 9. The Senate bill maintains funding for NASA's science division at $7.3 billion, the same as fiscal year 2025, while the House bill reduces it to $6 billion, still significantly more than the $3.9 billion for science in the White House budget proposal.
Flat is the new up
In reality, a flat budget is effectively a cut in funding once you account for inflation. But spaceflight and space science advocates celebrated the bills written to restore NASA's budget.
"Though the House and Senate have much still to debate on full-year appropriations, this much is clear: Congress is rejecting the full extent of the unprecedented, unstrategic, and wasteful cuts to NASA and NASA science proposed by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget," the Planetary Society said in a statement.
However, there remains a sense of urgency among NASA's backers for Congress to pass a full appropriations bill. NASA has already directed teams to submit "closeout plans" for dozens of missions teed up for cancellation in Trump's budget. Many scientists view this as an effort by the Trump administration to cancel as many NASA science missions as possible before Congress passes a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, Ars reported earlier this month.
"The Planetary Society calls on the OMB and the current NASA leadership to acknowledge clear congressional intent to support NASA science, and avoid the premature implementation of irreversible structural changes such as imposing research grant cancellations, indiscriminate reductions in force, and active mission terminations."
"We rejected cuts that would have devastated NASA science by 47 percent and would have terminated 55 operating and planned missions, and instead we provide $7.3 billion, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), ranking member of the Senate's Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations subcommittee, during a budget markup hearing last week.
The full text of the Senate bill hasn't been released, but the budget blueprint would postpone the Trump administration's plan to cancel the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, according to Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), the Senate subcommittee's chairman.
The SLS and Orion vehicles are core elements of NASA's Artemis program to return US astronauts to the Moon, and the White House proposed canceling both after two more flights, long enough to make a single Artemis lunar landing attempt. NASA would then procure commercial rides to the Moon on rockets and spaceships from companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, while the government's focus would pivot to mounting human missions to Mars.
"For NASA, the bill reflects an ambitious approach to space exploration, prioritizing the agency's flagship program Artemis and rejecting premature terminations of systems like SLS and Orion before commercial replacements are ready," Moran said. "We make critical investments to accelerate our plans to land Americans on the lunar surface before the Chinese, but also in the technologies and capacity to land astronauts on Mars."
Moran said the Senate bill also protects "key science missions" to provide furthering scientists' "understanding of the Earth" and ensuring Americans are "better stewards of our natural resources." The bill also supports programs to "safeguard the Earth from natural disasters," Moran said.
"I don't know what normal is around here, but if something is normal, this is as close to being normal as what this committee would do, and this subcommittee has done in the past," Moran added.
Fewer robots, more humans
The House version of NASA's fiscal year 2026 budget includes $9.7 billion for exploration programs, a roughly 25 percent boost over NASA's exploration budget for 2025, and 17 percent more than the Trump administration's request in May. The text of the House bill released publicly doesn't include any language explicitly rejecting the White House's plan to terminate the SLS and Orion programs after two more missions.
Instead, it directs NASA to submit a five-year budget profile for SLS, Orion, and associated ground systems to "ensure a crewed launch as early as possible." A five-year planning budget seems to imply that the House committee wants SLS and Orion to stick around. The White House budget forecast zeros out funding for both programs after 2028.
The House also seeks to provide more than $4.1 billion for NASA's space operations account, a slight cut from 2025 but well above the White House's number. Space operations covers programs like the International Space Station, NASA's Commercial Crew Program, and funding for new privately owned space stations to replace the ISS.
Many of NASA's space technology programs would also be salvaged in the House budget, which allocates $913 million for tech development, a reduction from the 2025 budget but still an increase over the Trump administration's request.
The House bill's cuts to science and space technology, though more modest than those proposed by the White House, would still likely result in cancellations and delays for some of NASA's robotic space missions.
Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY), the senior Democrat on the House subcommittee responsible for writing NASA's budget, called out the bill's cut to the agency's science portfolio.
"As other countries are racing forward in space exploration and climate science, this bill would cause the US to fall behind by cutting NASA's account by over $1.3 billion," she said Tuesday.
Lawmakers reported the Senate spending bill to the full Senate Appropriations Committee last week by voice vote. Members of the House subcommittee advanced their bill to the full committee Tuesday afternoon by a vote of 9-6.
The budget bills will next be sent to the full appropriations committees of each chamber for a vote and an opportunity for amendments, before moving on to the floor for a vote by all members.
It's still early in the annual appropriations process, and a final budget bill is likely months away from passing both houses of Congress and heading to President Donald Trump's desk for signature. There's no guarantee Trump will sign any congressional budget bill, or that Congress will finish the appropriations process before this year's budget runs out on September 30.
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